Appalachian Flatfoot Dance Workshop
Put on your dancing shoes and come along to our Appalachian Flatfoot Dance Workshop with award-winning flatfoot dancer Julie Shepherd-Powell.
You'll learn some of the basic percussive steps that accompany traditional mountain string band music from the Appalachian Mountains in the United States. Flatfooting has roots in Irish, west African, and Cherokee dance traditions, with rhythms that match the sounds of fiddle and banjo. Participants will learn how to string together different steps to match and complement fiddle tunes from Appalachia.
Julie Shepherd-Powell is an award-winning flatfoot dancer and clawhammer banjo player from the mountains of western North Carolina. She competes in flatfoot dance competitions at fiddlers' conventions all over the southeastern United States, and calls square dances anywhere from Vancouver, BC to New York City. She has won numerous awards for her percussive dancing, including first place at the 2022 Grayson County Fiddlers' Convention in Elk Creek, Virginia. She's also an assistant professor of Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, where she combines her love of Appalachian culture, music, and the environment in her teaching and creative projects